Santa comes early this year for Kansas City-area retailers

The biggest shopping day of the year might have come a little earlier than usual, Kansas City retailers said.

Typically, retailers gear up for a crazy Saturday before Christmas, but the game may have changed this year because Christmas falls on a Sunday.

“This past Saturday, we anticipate being the biggest day of the year,” said Sean Phillips, regional marketing director for Oak Park Mall.

Phillips said he still expects Christmas Eve to be a big shopping day, especially because people who normally work will be off for the weekend.

“It is a time when only a certain number of people, really those last-minute shoppers, are shopping,” he said.

Rosemary Salerno, general manager for Zona Rosa in Kansas City, said that traffic for the week ending Sunday was up 6 percent from the same period last year and that every single day in the week saw an increase.

“It just kept getting busier and busier,” she said. “Overall, this has been a good season. It’s all been extremely positive this season.”

Salerno said she’s seen a trend in the past few years that stores have been getting more competitive with sales to keep winning shoppers. Starting with the ultra-competitive Black Friday deals, stores often discount their entire stores to attract holiday shoppers.

“It just seems like every year it gets more and more aggressive,” Salerno said. “It’s consumers (who are) winning.”

Legends Outlets Kansas City also came out on the winning end of weekend shopping: the center saw a 57 percent increase in traffic compared with the same weekend last year. Marketing Director Amy Kraft credited some of the rise to better weather this year, but she added that many stores were having sales.

“We had some very strong promotional deals that attracted people,” Kraft said.

On Thursday, the National Retail Federation revised its holiday sales forecast, predicting that retail sales would rise 3.8 percent from last year to $469.1 billion. Before, the NRF had predicted a 2.8 percent rise.

Salerno said not to overlook sales during the week after Christmas, when people will go shopping to redeem their gift cards and spend their holiday cash.